Robot Claw – Page 482 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Shuwatch!

June 12, 2013

After yesterday’s exhaustion, today was a rest day. Which meant over 7 hours on my feet doing 22k steps 🙂

The location was Akihabara (again!):

Bernard stayed at the ryokan for resting, so it was just KLS and I. We had no real goal, and just perused the seemingly endless amount of otaku shops.

Here’s a creative display of new manga:

An area of merchandising that was nonexistent on our first trip a dozen years ago was food. It’s quite common now to see food merchandise for most series. Here’s a selection of monster hunter snack food items:

We also went to Yodibashi camera in Akiba, pretty much the most amazing store on Earth. Here is KLS perusing a $8500 4K TV:

And a charmingly marketed men’s razor:

Lunch was Italian. I had spaghetti and KLS a mushroom pizza. As we were waiting I checked my DS for street passes. It’s very easy to get them here on the subway. I’ve obtained 51 in just two trips out with the DS.

KLS headed back early and I hit the game shops and centers and failed to win anything great. I was pretty ruined when I got back. But not too ruined to be giddy with excitement when we discovered Ultraman on TV 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to Kyoto for two days on the bullet train!

Here Comes The Rain…

June 11, 2013

The destination for the day was Enoshima Island via the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura. After training it (~70 minutes) to the area, we hiked up and down a mountain for a bit:

This was part of the ‘Daibutsu hiking course’ and eventually led us to a wonderful little shrine and rest stop..,

At which KLS cooled herself…

And we met a cat!

As you can see, the grizzled beast was quite popular 🙂

A bit further on we reached Zentairi (sp?), a famous shrine said to increase the fortunes of anyone who washes money in its spring waters. The place was full of school children.

Eventually, after some Kamakura ‘boulevarding’, we reached the famous great Daibutsu statue:

It’s almost 800 years old, was cast in 30 pieces and is hollow (we went inside). A light rain had started to fall by now, and we were resting whenever it was convenient:

Oh, we saw squirrels yesterday!! I saw the first climbing bamboo but the second was on the street in Kamakura. He was very curious and came right up to a small crowd of people:

Look how brown and wooly he is! How cute!

After the train, at Enoshima station, we found too women posing a Woody revoltech figurine in a manner indicative of the ‘Hentai Woody’ meme! (Google search at your own risk, btw):

I trust Bernard will post a good close up photo of Woody 🙂

That’s Enoshima island, which is as beautiful as we remembered. We slowly made our way up the island, and Bernard and I went to the top of the Sea Candle tower for a panoramic view:

And then… the rains came! Finally, the two (B was paying me to carry his…) umbrellas I had carried for 5 hours came in useful! On the top of the island, without climbing down the other side to see the dragon cave, we started the long, wet trek back: